Mezmera

Mostly 56% for positionals or so to cover the basic incarnate content. If things get real hairy I can use Unleash Potential to amp up the defenses another 25% which it also gets me 150% regen and 100% recovery. Paired with that defense my base resists are 75% s/l, 60% f/c, 50% en/neg/tox, and 45% psi and then I have Melee Core and OWtS for Relentless to boost those resists for about another 20%. Also I have the tanker +absorb proc and entomb +absorb proc slotted in good spots where its pretty sure fire so I'm running a 900+ absorb shield as long as I'm staying aggressive attacking.

All said and done I'm at 90.22% DDR without having to use Ageless which then the Rebirth heal does much more for me. My Alpha is Agility so I can low slot defense sets and still pull in 70% enhancement values thanks to a good chunk of it being immune to DR which you get to enhance the Battle Agility DDR for 70% too. Yes Grant Cover giving teammates a 15% defense buff to stack with their Maneuvers and other shields is quite nice for them.

Well on Shield tanks the DDR is quite comparable to SR. Double stacking Active Defenses gets me to 90% DDR which I can maintain that double stack easily. SR is an easy build but on tanks Shield gets to be so much more. Other armors sure that DDR wrecks but Shield is right there with SR plus it has so many other things to bring to the table.

I agree Shield has tons of upside. The only thing lacking on Shield is a heal and endurance management especially for those smelters. The offensive clearing afforded you in Shield Charge plus the soft knockback control is quite strong. For me Rebirth just wasn't cutting it so I picked up Unrelenting which has been a fantastic addition. Unrelenting is such a big power for this it has good offensive stats so I can stay aggressive while I'm getting healed which I can take advantage of thanks to Shield's great defense/resist/high hp ability plus it has some decent endurance buff and its a rez. I also went for Unleash Potential for the endurance boost plus the additional defense/regen boost I won't scoff at. And there's always the Energy epic pool. I really love my Shield tank for this and I've seen good things from Rad Armor. A well thought out and played tank will typically shine on Relentless regardless but you still need good support roles for you and your team no matter.

You're the one brow beating someone for wanting to adopt a very neat idea of using costume slots for their MM pets to craft their own pet costumes (I don't ever play MM btw). Pretty bad argument to be making talking about "copyright infringement" whilst playing on itself a pirated server...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony

If you're focus is theme then I'd have agree Stalker and Ninjitsu seem to go hand in hand. Now if you want a quality armor there's all kinds of better ones. The easy o play and build ones are SR and EA. The ones with high potential with good building would be Ice and Invuln with the latter being my favorite armor on Stalkers. As far as attacks my favorite had been Street Justice since it just hits so hard and has some decent little pbaoe. But if killing AVs is your thing then Energy Melee is what you want. Total Focus, AS, ET and Snipe all being extreme damage attacks in a chain is real nasty, yeah its aoe damage is meh but you're playing the stalker to murder the biggest thing in your way as fast as you can. I've teamed with some nasty EM/Bio's as well, its kind of up to you on what you want to achieve and own your choice.

Yes get those accolades for your tank asap. Tanks and Brutes have the highest base hp and conversely benefit most from those hp percentage increases. I'll usually get all the accolades for my favorite characters and my tank definitely builds their hp with these accos and the permanent IO hp bonuses. My shield tank has 3100 hp and when you figure in all of the resists and defense available its a pretty unsinkable battleship if you put in the work to build it.

Yes I wouldn't play Archery on a Defender seeing how they get the best debuff values out of their assaults so something like Archery that doesn't have a secondary effect for the AT to take advantage of I wouldn't recommend it over something like Sonic and Dual Pistol which has some real nice -dmg debuffing. TA Defender is fantastic though. I highly recommend TA/DP, its a busy playstyle but if you get some binds set up it is an amazing character to play.

For my Energy dom I take Power Blast, Power Up, Total Focus, Snipe and Power Burst. Those last three attacks are nasty and with recharge chasing permadom you'll have our chain pared down to those and a 4th attack. Whirling Hands is meh. I don't slot Forced Feedback all over since most of the powers have fast recharge already and low proc rates so I only slot that Force Feedback into my Snipe. If you're going Primal that target aoe blast will net you good value for a Force Feedback proc and obviously you'll also want ET and a shield.

A build without Hasten is like a burger without cheese. Sure you can do it but why would you? Even if I had an allergy that might kill me I'd still take Hasten.

I boost all of the purple and pvp sets that I have slotted always except for the procs and uniques since those bonuses are already attuned being in these categories. The hardest part of the game is endgame so I'd like to have my best enhanced values for that. Outside of the ATO and Winter sets I'll sometimes use catalysts on regular sets that are in powers I get in low levels where enhanceable value seems like overkill like say a full Gaussian set in a Build Up power. Any powers I get after 40 I'll just boost the sets in those even if its a LotG. Sometimes I'll catalyze the LotG it just depends how much defense value I'm already enhancing and how low level that defense power is available to me. I'll always boost the Steadfast unique though. I'd say my builds typically ratio out to be about 85% boosted > 15% catalyzed sets. That's mostly Purple, PvP, ATO, Winter sets and uniques.

On my Shield/StJ tank I like to slot the the full set of the one with the +res proc into the first attack since the proc rate is pretty high and the attack is quick and I make use of it quite a lot. Then I like to slot the full set of the one with the +absorb proc into Spinning Strike for a few reasons. Since this attack is categorized as target aoe and I don't really like any of the sets available in those powers this tanker ATO set fills in nice here. Also, with that many targets for a chance to proc off of it'll mostly always fire if its last absorb shield got damaged off. Then I can round out the rest of my best attacks with the most impactful sets. I've also got Entomb's +absorb proc slotted into Crushing Uppercut which stacks with the tanker +absorb, both fire real well if their first procs get damaged off so in the heat of a fight I'm getting a 900+ absorb shield, or 'heal' if you want to look at it that way, with high frequency as long as I'm attacking.

I'd skip Phalanx Fighting before I'd skip Grant Cover although I haven't played a Shield Stalker and I think Phalanx might be what you lose for Hide. Like others are pointing out you get yourself a good source of DDR and also the -recharge resist is pretty nice too. Netting the rest of your team 11-15% defense I'm sure will be highly appreciated. Great power.

It's a great power pool for melee armor characters that lack a heal but have their resists/defenses in order. I'll usually go with fighting, speed, force of will, and epic powers and I leave that 4th pool option open. I'd recommend Presence for something like SR or Shield that can use the taunt to take the heat off of the team and can make use of a great heal with good offensive stats. Though yeah I see it as a very niche pool for mostly the reasons you're listing. If you have a Shield character I recommend having a look at it though.

I've rarely taken the Presence Pool but when I do take it I'm taking it for Unrelenting. The fear powers to me are meh particularly with no real good Fear IO sets. Unrelenting on my Shield tank without a heal has been transformative and since I'm taking a taunt anyways I'm just sacrificing one power to get that awesome Unrelenting goodness. Good niche power pool if you're going to make use of the taunt/fear powers to get Unrelenting. Most characters though it's not worth the 2 powers to sacrifice.

I'm just going to put this out there right now. If ANYONE should be getting a Whip set first it better be Dom's, the rest of you can wait on the hand-me-downs. For one it makes the most thematic sense for Dom's to have it, also how many more assault combinations do the rest of the AT's need to keep getting? Plus how long has this been on the wishlist? I know Dom's have been begging for this since live. You jokers can wait on this one. I'm just surprised Blasters haven't already gotten this powerset by now.

I like to get all of my characters down to 4 of the best attacks in their assaults that I'll use in a sequence and typically the aoe attacks mixed in where advantageous to use unless it's my tank where I want to soak up aggro with pbaoe attacks so those get moved into the first 4 rotation. For instance on my Mind/Nrg dom my sequence can look like this: #1 key: Good fast lead in attack either Bone Smasher or Dominate (go-to control) #2 key: Power Burst; My best follow up power #3 key: Total Focus; The attack I look to lean on the most with great damage and leads into other things like the Energy Mechanic #4 key: Snipe; Second follow up after TF and Power Burst My recharge is usually good enough that I can use #3 and then go with 2, 4 and 1 by the time 3 recharges to start it all over again. #5 usually is where I slot a good aoe attack, after that I'll be ready to click other areas in the trays or binds. But yes you need to consider animation times of most things on top of those in your main chain because things that you'll want to use like Build Up, Soul Drain or Sleet eat into the fluidity of your chain and mostly those powers are too beneficial to not use.

This ones a unicorn at the moment. It's quite a tough endeavor for an uncoordinated team of 8. The team really needs to be well built from top to bottom with a sturdy tank, some good support, debuffers and damage dealers along with making sure you get the requisite incarnate Destiny powers. You yourself as the lead need to understand to build the team to specifics and have options that you can switch to so as to fill in for an easier time for the team. I'm known to have had success getting PUGs through this and yet still I find it a slog putting one together sometimes, it is just what it is. Most people are used to the lesser difficult gaming wildly abundant outside of Aeon that the reward for Relentless just might not seem worth their time. Until they get more stuff like this to get people more willing to participate and maybe tying in some more special things its just going to be hard to organize Aeon's. But yeah calling people closed minded won't help your cause any. Before I go preemptively judging potential teammates I like to first look in the mirror and make sure I myself have options to bring that can carry a team through something like a Relentless Aeon with a few capable teammates.

Mind Control doesn't really need much tweaking if any but I get the want to freshen it up and make it a bit more newcomer friendly. The most drastic thing I'd do would be to come up with a creative idea for TK. Here's what I'd do and agree with most: t1: Mesmerize - High damage I can get on board with t2: Dominate - Holds should be t2 t3: Confuse - How OP would it be to have this at lvl 2 as opposed to lvl 6 currently? Confuse is the signature of Mind Control and so I see no reason why this ST control couldn't be selected here in place of where most other control gets a nice aoe immob that feeds damage. t4: Levitate - Fine at this point but if you want to raise the damage a little no problems there. t5: Mass Hypnosis - Fine as is t6: TK - Get creative but I don't necessarily want to see a direct port over from the new grav mechanic. t7: Total Domination - Fine as is t8: Terrify - Fine as is t9: Mass Confusion - Fine as is And yeah I'd alter some things for Controllers to make it a bit better for Containment and the limited damaging powers in Mind, but they also do have support sets they can also focus on.

Carnies and 50+ Knives of Vengeance and the new Relentless Goldbrickers I like fighting since they make you keep on your toes. As much as I like the ambiance of Cimerora and those Romans I don't find their fights all that intriguing. Once they break free from control its all out the window which I find pretty cheap. Whereas the Relentless Goldbrickers these devs did a good job of giving them a way to break free from control but not eliminate any impact of the control AT thereafter because you can still apply another fresh round of control to get them back in order. Plus then once the Cim's break free you have to keep kiting because if you stop to have a glass of water they'll gang up on you and all that -def in such quick succession really neuters anything that doesn't have high DDR. As someone that enjoys playing a control AT with high built in defense I find these Cimerorans to be big cheaters. I do find the ITF to be a grand adventure and these fights a good test of durability for my doms but I much prefer how the devs implemented critters breaking free of control on the Relentless Aeon. All in all I like pretty much every group in the game, I just hate cave maps so any group that makes me trudge through those cramp passages will get extra sauce on my punches.

Fair enough. Although I believe the Banished Pantheon do get a bad rap, all they want is their Necronomicon back...

Why beat around the bush? We all know the conclusion you're piecing together for us. The so called "Villains" in this simulation are the true heroes and the "Heroes" just have well funded prop....er... press.

Yes I understood that you were talking about purple enhancement sets.

Don't listen to @MoonSheep or @Vince their Mind doms are a waste of potential. These two jokers play Fire Assault because they don't have the guts to get in the middle of a fight. My Mind dom tanks. She has capped positionals, high resists and all of that hard lockdown control along with high stealth. If neither of my hard aoe controls are recharged its no matter to me I can still alpha zerg with all of my melee aoe damage thanks to my defenses. If you're afforded the ability to build in great defenses to pair with everything else you can do on a dom why not? But you will want to use purple and pvp sets though. I haven't given my two cents on this because it does come across as a very specific build request. Not using purples on a dom of all things is such a waste of playtime. You want to build your dom to maximum efficiency and purples help you do that.